I've started so I'll furnish...

[redscharlach]

For no real reason other than to satisfy my own gnawing curiosity, I'd like to enlist your help with a piece of vocabulary research. But before you jump into the nearest tickybox, please point your eyes at the following informative diagram:

Comments

[redscharlach]

I'm now realizing that this question has more variables than I ever thought of. Whoever writes the definitive thesis on the matter is going to have a rather large task on their hands....

[skelody]

I'd only call it a footstool if it was a stool. And a stool must have legs! Or, at least, be made of a hard material like wood or metal!

[redscharlach]

I think I'm willing to stretch the definition of stool to cover something without legs, as long as it hasn't got a back to it. But I realize that this may be a controversial position. ;-)

[amythest_n_ice]

I always think a footrest kind of has to be part of the chair/sofa, you know, like a lazyboy or barber's chair. A footstool needs to be a stool. A hassock (and tuffet for that matter) are lumps in the grass that you sit on/trip over while tromping through countryside, and an ottoman to me is a chest type thing you park at the end of your bed. Hope that helps your linguistic questing.

[redscharlach]

I think a lot of English speakers would probably just point at it and call it a thingy!

[brewsternorth]

Some of it depends upon the size. A footstool would be for me anything between an actual stool at foot height up to an ottoman-without-the-storage-bit, but it ought to conform to a cuboid shape.

A pouffe is small and round and stuffed. Depending upon the three-dimensional characteristics of that object in the pic, it could be a pouffe *or* a footstool. Hope that made sense!

[redscharlach]

You wouldn't say a footstool could be round/cylindrical, then? Even if it had legs?

*is playing devil's advocate now*